A dream of insanity
by Xavier Rhal
Summary: A dream or nightmare i had
1. Chapter 1

The room was dark. No not just dark, but the blackest of black, the only illumination was from the flashes of lightning and the glow from the computer screens lining the far wall of the room. I experienced this not first hand but as if I was there, I felt the action, the reaction, the final conclusion. Neither Third person, nor first.  
With a bang and a flash it was over.  
My best friend dead. On the floor. Dead, by my hand, my weapon, my gun, my bullet.  
And as quickly as the scene started, it ended.  
In darkness.  
And as opposites attract, the next scene starts in sterile light.

"where are you guys?" I asked, trying to hear through the bad reception of my cell. Wal-Mart never has good reception.  
"We're over--crackle" my best friend said as he cut in and out.  
"Well if you can hear me, I parked at the far end of the plaza, by the Chinese curio store." I was mad at Sarah for some reason or another so she wasn't texting me, but it was agreed that we would all meet up over there by my car if we got separated.  
"Okay, meet you there," he said as the call was dropped by the relentless Wal-Mart dead zone. I chuckled as I thought of those hotel commercials about dead zones.  
I glanced around, trying in vain a last ditch attempt to search out Sarah and him. No such luck acquiesced to my request so I moved on to a self check out lane. as I stepped towards the entrance between the inside and outer doors, it seemed as if I stepped towards the divider of heaven, on one side dark, treacherous flashes of lightning. On the other, light warmth, and protective. I shrugged off the thoughts and moved to the outside world, and headed to my vehicle.  
I had finally trekked across the wasteland of vehicles that covered the parking lot and placed my whatever I had bought inside my vehicle. As I opened my trunk, I thought I saw, within a flash of lightning, a creature but without the continuous light, I strained my eyes for naught. Paranoia set in, as I continued to unload my cart.  
"A U! Over here!" I heard Sarah call out to me.  
I turned and sure enough there they were. I could kill them, but there they were, crossing through the lawn at the end of the parking lot by the woods.  
"Let's get out of here, I have a bad feeling." he said.  
"Don't tell me you believe in the news story this morning? About the mutant cougars roaming the area?" I said, as I remembered the illusion of seeing something earlier.  
"Maybe."  
"Well let's just go," Sarah pleaded. She was getting the onset of paranoia.  
And as quickly as a the lightning flashed, we were surrounded by feline animals, cougars.  
"Well, I guess you were right." I told him.  
"Let's save the I told you so's for if we live through this," he said as he pulled out a pocket knife.  
"Sarah hides." I told her. She ducked away behind a few vehicles.  
Instantly the animals started in, and we evaded them just enough, but it's only a matter of time before we would be done in fore we were outnumbered, and out armed, with only him having a pocket knife and me my fists. A cougar launched itself at his face and he stabbed his pocket knife through its neck.  
"Distract them, I have an idea!" I launched into a run towards the Chinese curio shop. I had the idea that the Shoppe would have some form of sword to use. I used my elbow and broke open the window of the door and unlocked the door from the inside.  
"There's got to be something I can use." I scanned the front, "Ah ha!" There on top of the glass case by the entrance was a beautiful black samurai sword. Without further ado I grabbed the sword and flew back down the hill. AS I approached the scene, he was attacked from behind, knocked flat on his face. Sarah broke from the cars and tried to make a run for my vehicle. The cougar that toppled him leapt up and grabbed Sarah with its claws. In pain and agony she screamed out for help, though there was no one to hear her. He didn't get up.  
I unsheathed the sword and ran up to her, and in one quick concise motion I flipped the sword and cut the cougars head in two, thus having freed Sarah from death's grasp.  
"Sarah, they seem to have run off, I'll get the car." I hoofed it to the car at a brisk run, wary for any hidden dangers. As I got to the car, I noticed I had left it wide open, but didn't give it another thought. I entered to vehicle and turned on the ignition, which turned on the interior lights for 3 seconds.  
An animal face in the rearview mirror.

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*Flashback with the lightning*  
I am at a doorstep. A house near the center of town. I've been here before.  
My friend's mom opens the door. This is the town of our childhood, which was bankrupted and closed down by our age of 15.  
"How are you?" she asks.  
"Um, good, is he around?" I inquire.  
"Oh yes, I'll go get him. Where are you guys going?" she asks like a good parental unit does.  
"Just down to the park in town"  
"Ok, just a second and he'll be right out." she disappears inside, hopefully to go get him. After a few moments, the door opens and he exits.  
"Hey, what's up?" he asks.  
"Let's go."  
We walk down the road to the center of town.

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After I snapped back to reality, the light was still on. In the first second, I saw that I had involuntarily picked up a feline hitchhiker. And in the next second, the cougar lunged at me, but I had him in the final marker. At the last second I impaled my sword through the driver's seat and skewered the creature like a shish ka bob.  
For the next 20 seconds, I just sat there, incredulous at the near loss of my life, how close the final frontier nearly was. Then I noticed that the cats were moving in again. My engine roared to life, giving the cougars pause. I got out and pulled the lifeless carcass out of the backseat of my car.  
"Hmm, red," I muttered to myself. With the close examination, I found that the animals were red. I got back in my vehicle and went to pick up my friends. By the time that action had transpired, he was back up and Sarah looked ok, just shaken.  
"Get in." I told them.  
"Boy am I glad to see you, I thought they had gotten you," he replied.  
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, now let's depart before we become the departed." and with that we flew like

I drove like a bat out of hell...bat out of hell? Cat out of hell? Hell Cats. Red Cougars or Hell Cats now. Interesting. Anyways, I drove like a bat out of hell to Sarah's apartment. As we're going cross country, unbeknownst to us we are being followed by the Hell Cats. The lightning evolved into rain and thunder, now officially a full blown storm.  
"Damn it." I cursed. My windshield wiper blades were sticking, making it nearly impossible to see out. I was forced to pull over on an uphill slope in the road. When I exited, I quickly leapt to the front of my car to fix the blades. As I endeavored to fix the problem, a howl cut loose across the area. I froze stock still like a deer in the headlights. Almost instantly I regained my wits and jumped back into the car and gunned it up the hill.  
As soon as I crossed the hill top, there was a Hell Cat standing right in the road. The animal startled me, as if I wasn't already on the verge of crazy already. I slammed the brakes, and the car went into a hopefully death defying spin towards the ditch....

"what did you want to talk about?" he asks me as we sit on the swings.  
"Nothing, I just wanted to hangout." I lie. I didn't really want to ask what was on my mind.  
"You can't lie to me; we've been friends for our entire lives. We're what? Turning 15 in three months? That's ten years we've known each other, played together as little kids." he counterattacks.  
"Fine. We'll always be friends right? Best friends forever?" I ask him.  
"Of course, forever." he says.

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As we slide out of control into the ditch, everything seemed to go slow motion.  
And a song that I find strangely evil plays as we spin to our imminent doom.

All around me are familiar faces  
Worn out places, worn out faces  
Bright and early for their daily races  
Going nowhere, going nowhere  
And their tears are filling up their glasses  
No expression, no expression  
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow  
No tomorrow, no tomorrow  
And I find it kind of funny  
I find it kind of sad  
The dreams in which I'm dying  
Are the best I've ever had  
I find it hard to tell you  
'Cos I find it hard to take  
When people run in circles  
It's a very, very  
Mad World  
Children waiting for the day they feel good  
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday  
Made to feel the way that every child should  
Sit and listen, sit and listen  
Went to school and I was very nervous  
No one knew me, no one knew me  
Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson  
Look right through me, look right through me

And then the ride stopped and only darkness.

As I awakened, I realized that I was no longer in the vehicle. I had been thrown from the car and was lying on the grass. I stood up and glanced about my surroundings, scanning for Sarah and him. They were both lying face down a few meters from where I had landed.  
"Hey get up," whispered to them as I shook them awake, "We've got to get on the run. The Hell Cats are probably looking for us."  
"I'm up," he said.  
Sarah sits up, "I'm alive?"  
"Not for long if we don't get going. We could end up cat toys." I said. I helped them to their feet.  
A howl ripped the air again.  
"Run, run now." I pulled the sword from the car. "I'll try to buy time."  
"Okay. May the Force be With You." he said. And then they took off, disappeared into the black night.  
I took a stance, as the cats surrounded me. They closed in, closer, closer, and still closer...then they took off. I stood there for a second, and then I realized that they were after the unarmed prey. I ran after him and Sarah.  
As I'm running, I realized that the ground that I was traveling across was actually a beaten path. Perhaps it was once a road. The further I ran the more I felt like I had been here before. The path I traveled on started passing in between buildings, a center road maybe? I moved further in town. I noticed a bright light from the center of town. I picked up the pace and when I got to the center, there was a building in the middle. Wait this town. This center. This was my old town. Over run and forgotten, except by whom? As I got closer, there was a ring of cougars out front, feasting. When I saw what it was they were feasting upon, I ran into them, sword drawn with a rage that would make the gods look in fear. I hacked them apart, killed several before they even realized I was upon them.  
When I cleared the ring, it was Sarah in the center.  
"Oh Sarah, I'm soo sorry." driven with grief I ran inside before the cats could recover and form a proper attack.  
The inside was nearly as dark as the outside. Meager running lights on the floor gave a clear path. I crept slowly deeper and deeper into the interior of the dark building. As I passed by doors, I peered inside. Mostly was what looked like labs. Formulas and equations on boards looked like genetic double helix coding an unknown structure. I continued into the bowels of the building, down several flights of stairs into the abyss. As I continued on for what seemed like an eternity, I saw a door way. A door at the very end of the hall. No other twists and turns, just a final door.  
Sword at the ready, I crept closer.  
"Come in, friend," a familiar voice called.  
I entered.  
"You." I stated. I pointed my sword at him.  
"Yes, Me." he nodded.  
"Is this your lab?"  
"Yes, it's where I engineered the Hell Cats"  
"They are your production?"  
"Yes, my engineering an genius gave forth to an ultimate attack animal"  
"Seems that they've gotten out of hand," I stated. I started to circle around him.  
"Stop," he pulled out a gun, "Or I'll have to shoot you."  
"Shoot me? I thought we were friends forever?"  
"We are, nothing personal, but this is business."  
"Then I'm sorry." I lunged. He dodged the sword and wrestled it out of my grip.  
I kicked the gun out of his hand and it skittered across the room to stop on the far wall from the computer screens.

The room was dark. No not just dark, but the blackest of black, the only illumination was from the flashes of lightning and the glow from the computer screens lining the far wall of the room.  
I experienced this first hand.  
I felt the action, the reaction, the final conclusion.  
First person viewpoint.  
With a bang and a flash it was over.  
My best friend dead. On the floor. Dead, by my hand, my weapon, my gun, my bullet.  
And as quickly as the scene started, it ended.  
In darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

Act 2

"Get out of the office. Why are you in here, what do you think this is night shift? Get out there and work." I yelled at one of my close friends. Such antics made me think of why I moved to Fort Wayne, what was I doing with my life? And then I remembered the night…

"I'm going, I'm going." He was really pissed off. Silly me, I know this guys name this time. Nate. Don't call him Nathaniel, he hates it.

Party, Avril Lavigne is playing in the background.

Stephanie Noud walked over to me. She had a look on her face, not very reassuring.

"Nate is pissed at you."

"Why? Because I yell at him when he isn't working? It's my job to be his boss."

"Yeah well he took it personal."

"Yeah well if you're talking to him tell him it wasn't personal it was just business."

And with those words threw me back to another age and time. My vision blurred as I couldn't hold back the flood gates of memories that played themselves like a death march in my head. I had my hand to my forehead without having realized it.

"Are you ok?" she asked.

"No, but I'll survive." I replied.

"Okay, I guess I'll go relay the message."

Another room down the hall where the party is playing music, there's a live band.

I walked into the door way and over to stand in the shadowy comfort of a corner. The room is darkly lit and smoky, a tenor sax starting to play a solo. Stephanie finds me over there and says Nate wanted to talk to me. I took one look around, savoring the big band playing a sad bluesy song, and then commenced the trek back to the first room. The party was still playing Avril Lavigne's "Runaway" song.

"Hey, we need to talk," Nate said as I approached him.

"I figured," I retorted.

"Can we go talk at my apartment? It's just across the plaza." He asked.

"Sure."

We were in a building that was part of an apartment community. There was a line of townhouses across the quad where I lived and there were what appeared to be a tent community in the center and a clubhouse on the opposite side of the town houses. This complex is part of the clubhouse and nates apartment is just beside the club house.

We walk the short distance to his apartment. There was someone walking ahead of us. He had turned to walk through the hedges in front of the apartment building and he disappeared like the hedges ate him. We went around the hedges and quickly into the building. We walked past his friend's apartment door, wills door and it was open, a dried blood splatter across the door on the wall. We turned around and left. As we exited the building we heard a moaning from the hedges.

We ran down the street, through and alley, moans and shuffling behind us. I glimpsed what looked like a hell cat in a corner here and there.

We get to the McDonalds' we work at and I had my keys. We ran up to the locked door being closely tailed by what appeared to be zombies. I unlocked the door as quickly as I could but they were practically on top of us. One grabbed Nate and bit a piece of flesh out of nates neck as he pushed the zombie away... We ran inside the building and I locked the door behind us. A few moments later Nate was already showing signs of infection.

I ran around the counter and heard him fall to the floor.

Zombies pounding on the glass, moaning as loud as they could.

Nate stands back up, looking at me with eyes of the undead. He stumbles towards me…

Over the speakers in the McDonalds plays Avril Lavigne's Runaway song chorus

I just wanna scream and lose control

Throw my hands up and let it go

Forget about everything and run away.

I just wanna fall and lose myself

Laughing so hard it hurts like hell

Forget about everything and runaway

Crying, I say the line that has cursed me, plagued me and has been flashing through my head all day.

"Nothing personal, it's just business."

And I slam the salad cooler door on his head, severing it while keeping it fresh and crisp and cool at the same time.

And then, finally safe, I blackout.

It was a long 12 hours at McDonalds.

I arrive back to my apartment at dusk, the darkness more natural than most, a storm on the brink.

My apartment is located in a compound, the clubhouse to the left on a hill, my apartment down across the grounds exactly across from the clubhouse.

For some reason or other, it's kind of a rural apartment setting, with modern apartments on one side, but a campground type in the center of the grounds. There, someone has set up a giant canopy tent with tables and smaller tents under its embrace.

I unlock the door to my apartment, took a glance through. My roommates had left for the weekend. I went up the staircase, dark and lined with odds and ends that haven't made it to their destination within our closets of rooms.

After I change, I head out to the club house across the compound. As I try to leave, the door stuck. I look for the cause, seems the door has started to rot from the bottom up from the humidity. The door refuses to latch, so I set an alarm on the door to alert me if it opens. I shut the door, and left. I wouldn't be gone long, or so I hope.

I cross the camp, picking my way in between tents and tables and chairs on my way to meet Alicia in the club house. She was a friend from work that lived in the apartment complex by the clubhouse. When I arrive there, she sat at a table in the mess hall section with her two children.

"Hey, how was work?" she asks me.

"You know hell and long as." I reply.

"Yeah I know." and with that she took her children off to get something to eat.

As I sat there, I start to dose off, feeling the fatigue finally from a hard day's work. I awoke a couple seconds later with a jolt. My alarm buzzer was vibrating in my pocket. I stood, jolting to my feet. Alicia was walking back over to the table.

"What's wrong?" she inquires.

"Well my door won't latch so I set an alarm to alert me if anyone entered and it's gone off. And my roommates are gone for the weekend. So I got to go see if maybe the wind blew it open. I can see the wind just blowing around the tents."

"Ok, just let me know what happens"

And with that I took off at a quick step off to the door of the clubhouse. As soon as I reached the outside world I was shocked to see that the light outside had taken on a grey brown hue in its last throws of sunset dusk.

I ran.

I ran straight through the tents, jumping a table and approach my door...its open.

I have various weapons in my apartment, one a very working sword in my umbrella stand by the door for this such occasion. I grasp the hilt and silently unsheathe the weapon and take an en garde stance, ready for anything. I keep walking, through the hall, the kitchen, to the living room. I see a figure standing there; he turns with a gun in his grip. I quickly lunge forward and impale him through the chest.

The burglar falls to the ground, assumedly dead. I continue on through the apartment and to the upstairs. I canvas the rooms up until my room where I hear someone. I slowly crept into the room and there was someone lying on my bed.

"Hello." he says.

"You!"

"Yes me."

"Aren't you dead? What are you doing here?" I ask him. Apparently I knew him.

"just saying hello, oh and to kill you" he tells me.

"Why?" I say, this is just tearing me up.

"Because" and with that he pulls out his gun.

"I'm sorry." and I run him through with my sword. I pull my sword free.

"I'm beyond being killed by you" he says, "and so is my associate who is behind you."

The burglar I had stabbed down stairs is standing right behind me.

I dodge past him and do a roll down the stairs and ran right out the front door and into the tents, safely under the canopy.

I ran and ran, trying to put the feeling I was fighting behind me as I had to evade them. He ran right behind me, almost catching up with me. The other man had run to get their vehicle and was driving it outside the tent area beside the giant canopy. There's a plank leaning up a tree; I ran up the plank and up onto the giant canopy and start to run down it. He got into the car with the other man and was driving under the giant canopy, over tents and chairs and knocking tables down.

As this continues, the destruction does not go unnoticed. A tenant alerts the police.

"Come back down here, we have unfinished business" he yells up to me.

"I'm not ready to die yet!" I reply and I continue to run across the canopy. I start to unbind some of the tethers to the stakes holding up the canopy. Lightning starts the flash across the sky, the wind is howling, rocking the tent.

"Just a few more left" and I reach the last one.

The canopy collapses, trapping the car underneath.

A loud bang, cracking of thunder after a lightning strike and a flash followed by darkness.

The police lifted the canopy.

There was no car.

No anything.

Nobody.

Again I wait.


End file.
